Confirming long running rumors, Microsoft announced today its plans to bring its Cortana virtual assistant to devices running Android and iOS. Think of Cortana as the Microsoft equivalent of Google Now. The app is currently only available on Windows Phone devices and Windows 10 preview PCs, but Microsoft acknowledged that, in order to make it truly competitive, Cortana needs to work on the two mobile platforms...

Read more »

After months of being an iOS exclusive, Twitter has finally brought its streaming application Periscope to the Google Play Store. The app lets you broadcast live streams directly to your Twitter account, notifying your followers when your broadcast begins. The Android version is very similar to its iOS counterpart, but with a few added features. More detailed notification settings are present on the...

Read more »

There's a new version of the Play Store rolling out, and that means you're probably obsessively hunting for the APK. Well, we've got that. More importantly we've taken a look inside the APK to see if there's anything of note. There are some minor layout alterations, but also some interesting clues inside. Left: older layout, Right: newer layout - ignore the Nexus S Googler Kirill Grouchnikov explained that this...

Read more »

A rainbow of MIDI cables The humble Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) protocol—which allows a wide range of musical hardware and software like synths and digital audio workstations (DAW) to communicate with each other—is over 30 years old at this point. Due to widespread support, though, it remains the primary connection protocol in the audio production world. Now, thanks to Google, built-in MIDI support is available...

Read more »

Google is expected to unveil a new photo sharing and storage service at its annual I/O conference on May 28. According to reports, the service will be separate from its social networking site Google+. According to a Bloomberg report, Google will unveil the service at the upcoming I/O developer's conference in San Francisco. The photo service will have some new features including the ability to share photos on other...

Read more »

Android app drawers come in all shapes and sizes, but most stick to the same basic formula. There's a homescreen with apps, folders, and widgets. Everything else is tucked away inside the app drawer. Well, that isn't the case with Hexy. This experimental third-party launcher takes the apps that would otherwise be in your drawer and dumps them all over your homescreen. There they reside in a sea of hexagonal tiles. If you've...

Read more »

Adobe brought the stripped down Photoshop experience to Android tablets back in 2011, and added a version for phones in 2013. In a blog post today, the company says the all-in-one approach doesn't make as much sense. Therefore, Adobe will be releasing three new "capture" apps called Color CC, Brush CC, and Shape CC. The classic Photoshop Touch apps are being discontinued and will be pulled from...

Read more »

A few Android phones have sported fingerprint readers over the years, but these were all using software built specifically by the OEM for the device. We're now hearing whispers that Google is planning to build fingerprint reaching technology into the core of Android when M is announced at I/O next week. Both Buzzfeed and Ars Technica have talked about the possibility that fingerprint scanners could become a supported...

Read more »

We've been following the development of Google's Hangouts Chrome app for quite some time. The project referred to as Ultraviolet in August later launched in October as a floating chatheads-style experience. It was okay, but at the beginning of this month we caught wind of a change in the works that completely redoes the experience. That change has now gone live.   The new interface...

Read more »